As computers have continued to improve, users have continued to increase the number of software application programs that they concurrently run on such computers. Many of these programs generate notifications such as pop-up message windows, event notifications, and alarms. The proliferation of such programs has thus resulted in a commensurate proliferation of notifications generated by the programs. If a user wishes to disable such notifications (either temporarily or indefinitely), the user unfortunately must do so on a program-by-program basis. If the user additionally uses other devices running programs that perform similar functions and that are synchronized with programs executing on the above-described computer system (e.g., a contact list on a personal digital assistant or “PDA” that is synchronized with Microsoft® Office Outlook®), duplicate notifications increase the number of notifications that must be handled by the user. Notifications from each program executing on the device must also be individually disabled if the user wishes to reduce the number of such notifications. The task of disabling (and subsequently re-enabling) notifications is made even more time-consuming when one considers that, for many programs, the option to enable or disable notifications may be buried deep within the menu tree of each program, and may differ from program to program.